“This is always how you are!” Prof shouted. “No thought! No concern for consequences! Don’t you worry about what will happen? Don’t you ever think about failure?”
He teleported in front of us as we tried to flee, but a second later a rock wall created by Megan separated us.
“This isn’t working,” she said.
“Well, technically it is. I mean, my plan was just to run.”
“Okay, I revise: this isn’t going to work for very long. Sooner or later he’ll trap us. What’s your endgame?”
“Make him mad,” I said.
“And?”
“Hope…um…that makes him afraid? We were desperate, scared, frantic when we faced our weaknesses. Maybe he has to be in the same state.”
She gave me a skeptical look that—reflected through all of her shadows—was even more formidable than usual.
The wall near us melted away to powder. I gathered the energy of the tensors, preparing to be attacked by a series of forcefield spears, but Prof wasn’t behind the wall anymore.
Huh?
He crashed into existence behind us and seized me by the arm with one hand. With the other, he tried to vaporize the motivators on my vest. I yelped and let out a blast of tensor power—directly down, carving out the rock beneath me and dropping me lower a few feet. The sudden motion lurched me out of Prof’s grip and made his blast pass over my head.
I vaporized the ground below him, and by reflex he created a forcefield to stand on, so I wriggled through the dust underneath him. He had to twist to see me, but that left him open to Megan. Who, of course, shot him.
It didn’t have much effect; he was protected—as always—by thin, invisible forcefields around his whole person. Her shots did distract him long enough for me to crawl out from underneath the disc on the other side. There, I raised my handgun and started firing as well.
He turned on me, annoyed, and I hit him with a blast of tensor power, dissolving his forcefields. Megan’s gunshots began to chew chunks out of him, and he cursed, flashing away.
Megan stepped up to me, her face blurred by a hundred different identities. “We don’t have the weakness right, David.”
“His own powers could hurt him,” I said. “And the tensor leaves him able to be shot.”
“He heals from those shots immediately,” she said, “and getting hit with tensor power doesn’t disrupt his abilities as much as it should. It’s like…we have part of the weakness right, but don’t grasp the entire thing. And that’s why he’s not turning—confronting the powers must not be enough.”
I couldn’t argue. She was right. I sensed it inside, with a sinking feeling.
“So what now?” I asked. “Any ideas?”
“We have to kill him.”
I drew my lips to a line. I wasn’t sure we could do that. And even if we could kill him, it felt like in so doing, we might win the battle but lose the war.
Megan glanced at my gun. “You’re reloaded, by the way.”
My gun suddenly felt a bit heavier. “That’s convenient.”
“Can’t help thinking there should be more I can do than reload guns and replace walls. I can see so much….It’s overwhelming.”
“We need to pick one thing for you to change,” I said, holding my gun and watching for Prof to reappear. “Something very useful.”
“A weapon,” she said, nodding.
“Abraham’s minigun?”
She smiled, then that smile became an almost girlish grin. “No. That’s thinking too small.”
“That gun is too small? Woman, I love you.”
“Actually,” she said, turning her head to look at something I couldn’t see, “there is a very close world where Abraham ran ops for our team….”
“What does that have to do with guns? You—”
I cut off as the cavern shook. I spun, then stumbled back as the entire wall of the tunnel—dozens of feet along—turned to dust in an incredible burst of power. Prof stood beyond, and he’d been busy. Hundreds of spears of light hovered around him.
We’d been talking. He’d been planning.
I shouted, thrusting my hand forward and releasing tensor power as the spears came for us. I got the first wave, and most of the second, but my blast ran out as the third bore down upon us.
They got caught in a reflective, silvery metallic surface that formed a shield in front of us. Megan grunted, holding the mercury steady, blocking the next two waves of impact.
“You see?” she said, now bearing the glove that controlled the rtich. “In a world where Abraham leads the team, someone else has to learn to use this.” She grinned, then grunted at another impact. “So…we going to bring him down?”
I nodded, feeling sick. “At the very least, we need him afraid. That’s the path that led us to change—we were terrified, facing death. Only when we were in serious danger did confronting our fears work.”
It felt wrong, like I was still missing something, but in the chaos of the moment it was the best I could do.
“Time to be a little brash?” she said, holding out the rtich in one hand, gun in the other.
“Foolhardy,” I agreed, hefting my own gun. “Reckless.”
I nodded to her, took a deep breath.
And we attacked.
Megan lowered her shield, letting the rtich crawl back up her arm. I sent out another wave of tensor power, and we ran through it, firing like madmen. The guns seemed mundane compared to the deific powers spinning about us, but they were familiar. Dependable. Solid.
We interrupted Prof in the middle of raising another wave of light spears. His eyes widened and his jaw lowered, as if he was befuddled to see the two of us coming right at him. He swept his hand forward, summoning a large forcefield to block us, but I crashed through it with a tensor burst, and Megan followed.
“Fine,” he said, pounding his hand into the ground. Rock vaporized around it, and he pulled out a large rod of stone. He stepped forward, slamming it toward Megan, who caught it on her arm with the rtich.
The mercury ran down onto Prof’s arm, holding him in place as I arrived to send a burst of tensor power at him, intending to follow it with a few shots to the face. Prof, however, matched my invisible blast with one of his own. They canceled one another out, crashing together with a sound that made my ears pop.
I skidded to a halt, then shot him in the face anyway. I mean, it had to be distracting, right? Even if the bullets bounced off? Maybe I could get one stuck in his nose or something.
He growled, yanking his fist free of the rtich and shoving Megan away. He swung his bar toward me, but I managed to vaporize it. Then I dumped about half a ton of dust on him from the ceiling, making him slip and stumble.
When he righted himself, Megan came in with the rtich coating her hand, arm, and side to give power—then slammed her fist into his face. Even with the forcefields, Prof cursed and stumbled backward. Megan came in, and he vaporized the ground in a deep hole that must have emptied into a cavern far beneath us, but Megan formed the rtich into a long rod and caught herself with it spanning the hole.
I slammed into Prof shoulder-first, sending him skidding through dust. I knelt, giving Megan a hand, and yanked her out of the hole.
Together, we went at him again. She’d apparently reloaded our guns, because I didn’t run out of bullets. And when Prof vaporized my gun, she tossed me another one, almost identical, that she’d pulled from an alternate dimension.
She was amazing with the rtich, commanding it along her body like a rippling second skin, blocking, attacking, bracing herself at other times. I kept Prof’s footing uneven and—when I could—vaporized his forcefields, letting us pound him with bullets.
The fight felt strangely perfect, for a time. Megan and I working side by side—voicelessly, each anticipating the other’s moves. Incredible powers at our disposal, weapons in our hands. Together we forced a much more experienced Epic to retreat. For a moment I let myself believe we would win.
Unfo
rtunately, Prof’s healing powers kept spitting our bullets out. We weren’t negating those, not well enough. Megan shot for his head, not holding back, and I didn’t stop her. But that attack failed like the others.
We ended up in one of the main chambers, dust dribbling around us. I withstood an assault by Prof’s spears, grunting as one stabbed me in the shoulder. My motivator-aided healing powers let me recover. Megan stepped in, shielding me, but judging by the sweat dripping down her face, she was wearing down. I felt it too. Using the powers like this was taxing.
We braced ourselves, waiting for another attack from Prof. My gun clicked as Megan reloaded it, and I looked to her.
“Another attack?” she whispered.
I wasn’t sure anymore. I tried to force out a reply, but then the ceiling caved in on us.
I stumbled, looking up, but Megan managed to turn the rtich to stop the sudden torrent of stone and dust. Garish sunlight streamed down out of the hole Prof had made, as wide as the entire cavern. I blinked, unaccustomed to the light, and looked at Prof, who had stepped out of the way of the downpour and now stood under the lip, in shadow.
“Fire,” he said.
Only then did I notice that surrounding the perfect hole about thirty feet above was a squadron of fifty men and women.
They carried flamethrowers.
FLAMES rained down toward us. They’d been prepared for this—we hadn’t been forcing Prof to retreat. He’d been leading us by the nose!
The rtich vanished as the flames surrounded us. Megan’s images and shadows all snapped together and there was suddenly one crisp version of her, lit by firelight. She threw herself to the ground as the sheets of flame fell.
“No!” I screamed, thrusting my hand toward her, my glove flashing. I couldn’t afford to be bad at forcefields. Not now! I strained, like I was stretching to carry too heavy a weight.
Blessedly, a glowing protective dome appeared around Megan, blocking the flames. She pressed her hands against the shield I’d created, eyes wide as the entire thing was bathed in fire.
I stumbled back from the heat, my hand in front of my face. The fires got awfully close, but the burns I took healed.
Up above, men and women began firing automatic weapons. I screamed, releasing the tensor power and vaporizing the weapons in a wave of dust. Guns and flamethrowers crumbled. The gap above widened, raining down salt—and then people as their footing vanished beneath them.
The fires stopped falling, but the damage was done. Pools of liquid flame burned in the now-open cavern floor, curling black tongues of smoke toward the sky. It was so hot, sweat beaded on my forehead. Megan’s powers would be worthless in here. I blinked against the dust and smoke as Prof emerged from the shadows—grim, bloodied, but still not afraid.
Sparks. Still not afraid.
“Did you think I wouldn’t have a plan?” he said to me softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t prepare for Megan and her powers?” His feet ground against salt dust as he walked past a groaning soldier. “That’s what you forget, David. A wise man always has a plan.”
“Sometimes the plans don’t work,” I snapped. “Sometimes careful preparation isn’t enough!”
“And so you storm in, taking no care?” he shouted, startlingly angry.
“Sometimes you just have to act, Prof! Sometimes you don’t know what you need until you’re in the thick of it!”
“That doesn’t give you an excuse to upend another man’s life! Doesn’t give you an excuse to ignore everyone else to follow your own stupid passions! Doesn’t excuse your complete lack of control!”
I roared, building a crescendo of tensor power. I didn’t aim it toward the ground or the walls. I hurled it toward him: a charge of raw power, a vessel for my frustration, my anger. Nothing was working. Everything was falling apart.
It hit him, and he leaned back as if struck by something physical. Buttons on his shirt disintegrated.
Then Prof yelled and sent a blast of tensor power at me in return.
I hit it with my own. The two slammed against one another, like discordant sounds, and the cavern shook, stone rippling as if it were made of water. Vibrations washed over me.
The gun in my hand crumbled to dust, as did the tensor glove on the hand holding it. But the blast didn’t reach the rest of me. Still, the shock of it knocked me off my feet.
I groaned and rolled over. Prof was there, looming above me. He reached down and grabbed the three boxes on the front of my vest, ripping them free of the fabric—removing the motivators from the tensor suit. “These,” he said, “belong to me.”
No…
He backhanded me, a powerful blow that sent me sprawling across the rock and dust.
I came to rest near Megan, who was out of her protective dome—I was no longer holding the power to maintain it. She stood in the firelight, raised her gun in two hands, and shot at Prof.
A meaningless popping. Prof didn’t even seem to care. I lay there with my arm buried in the mottled dust of the floor.
“You’re fools,” Prof said, tossing the motivators aside. “Both of you.”
“Better a fool than a coward,” I hissed. “At least I’ve tried to do something! Tried to change things!”
“You’ve tried and you’ve failed, David!” Prof said, stepping forward as Megan ran out of bullets. I could hear the anguish in his voice. “Look at you. You couldn’t defeat me. You’ve failed.”
I rose to my knees, then settled back, feeling suddenly drained. Megan sank down beside me, burned, exhausted.
Perhaps it was the lack of the harmsway to prop me up. Perhaps it was the knowledge that at last we were done. But I didn’t have the energy to rise. I barely had the energy to speak.
“We’ve been beaten, yes,” Megan said. “But we haven’t failed, Jonathan. Failure is refusing to fight. Failure is remaining quiet and hoping someone else will fix the problem.”
I met his eyes. He stood about five feet before us in the cavern, which was now more of a crater. Ildithia’s creeping salt crystals had begun to crawl over the rim of the hole, crusting over the sides. If other soldiers were up there, they’d wisely taken cover.
Prof’s face was a network of cuts—injuries from debris blown by our violent explosion of tensor power, which had temporarily negated his forcefields. As if in defiance of my hopes, those wounds started to heal.
Megan…Megan was right. Something glimmered in my memories. “Refusing to act,” I said to Prof, “yes, that’s failure, Prof. Like…perhaps…refusing to enter a contest, even though you dearly wanted the prize?”
He stopped right in front of me. Tia had told me a story about him, when we were in Babilar. He’d wanted desperately to visit NASA, but wouldn’t enter the contest that might have won him the chance.
“Yes,” I said. “You never entered. Were you afraid to lose, Prof? Or were you afraid to win?”
“How do you know about that?” he demanded with a roar, summoning a hundred lines of light around him.
“Tia told me,” I said, climbing to my knees, placing my hand on Megan’s shoulder for support. It was starting to click. “You’ve always been like this, haven’t you? You founded the Reckoners, but refused to push them too far. Refused to face the most powerful Epics. You wanted to help, Prof, but you weren’t willing to take the last step.” I blinked. “You were afraid.”
The lines around him faded.
“The powers are part of it,” I said. “But not the whole story. Why do you fear them?”
He blinked. “Because…I…”
“Because if you are so powerful,” Megan whispered, “if you have all of these resources, then you don’t have any excuses left for failing.”
He started weeping, then gritted his teeth and reached for me.
“You’ve failed, Prof,” I said.
The forcefields faded and he stumbled.
“Tia’s dead,” Megan added. “You failed her.”
“Shut up!” The wounds on his face stopped healing. “
Shut up, both of you!”
“You killed your team in Babilar,” I said. “You failed them.”
He lunged forward and seized me by the shoulders, knocking Megan aside. But he was trembling, tears streaming from his eyes.
“You were strong,” I told him. “You have powers no others can match. And still you’ve failed. You’ve failed so deeply, Prof.”
“I can’t have,” he whispered.
“You did. You know you did.” I braced myself in his grip, preparing for the lie I spoke next. “We killed Larcener, Prof. You can’t complete Regalia’s plan. It doesn’t matter if I die. You’ve failed.”
He dropped me. I stumbled up to my feet, but he sank to his knees. “Failed,” he whispered. Blood dripped from his chin. “I was supposed to be a hero….I’ve had so much power…and I still failed.”
Megan limped up beside me, ashen-faced, rubbing her cheek where Prof had hit her. “Hell,” she whispered. “It worked.”
I looked at Prof. He still wept, but when he turned his face toward me, I saw pure loathing in his eyes. Hatred for me, for this situation. For being made a weak, common mortal.
“No,” I said, my stomach sinking. “He didn’t face it.”
We’d found the true weakness. Tia had been wrong. His fear was something deeper than just the powers, though they—and his competence as a whole—were certainly part of that. He was afraid of stepping up, of becoming everything he could be—not because the powers themselves frightened him. But because if he tried, then the failure was far, far worse.
At least if he held something back and failed, he could tell himself it wasn’t completely his fault. Or that it was part of the plan, that he’d always intended for it to go this way. Only if he gave his all, only if he was using every resource he had, would the failure be complete.
What a terrible burden the powers were. I could see how they’d become a focus for him, how they represented the whole of his competence—and how they also represented his potential for true failure.
Megan pressed something into my hand. Her gun. I regarded it, then—my arm feeling like lead—I raised it to Prof’s head.